The official version

My sister and I have lived in different countries for several years now. What that has meant, among other things, is that we have not spent a lot of time together, chatting about inconsequential things. You know how it is – when you only have a few minutes to speak, because international phone calls are expensive, we would stick to health, family, and jobs. But this past year Linda visited me in Canada, and we spent a lot of time together. What surprised me was when we talked about things that happened in our childhood, we often remembered things differently. So, which one of us remembered correctly? 

It used to bother me that the gospels did not tell their stories the same way every time. Like, was there one person tormented in the country of the Gadarenes, or were there two? Matthew refers to two demon-possessed men, while Mark has just one. And in what timing did events occur because the gospels often put things in different order. But each gospel writer saw what happened from a different perspective. They would remember what happened according to how it affected them.

We have just been thinking about Jesus’ death and resurrection, the most important time for Christians. Christmas may be a bigger celebration, but Easter is what Christianity is all about. And Jesus death would have meant nothing if he had not risen from the dead. He would have been simply another leader who got killed, and that was the end of the story. His followers would have found another leader, or perhaps gone back to what they were doing before. But Jesus didn’t stay dead! 

The four stories of Jesus death and resurrection have important areas that they agreed on, plus some things that were a little different. As already mentioned, I think the gospel writers wrote what they saw and experienced. When Jesus rose from the dead, Luke informs us that they first appeared to some women. Now if the disciples had wanted to make something up to convince people that Jesus had been raised from the dead, they would not have used women as the first witnesses. At that time women were not considered to be reliable. Education was just for males.  Surely if you wanted to prove the resurrection you would choose to have men as the first witnesses! No one was thinking about how to convince people Jesus had been raised from the dead, though. They were just sharing what happened.

The problem is, however, that the early church does not seem to want to continue to tell the story of women being the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. When Paul talks about the resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians he does not mention Jesus first appearing to Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James. Rather Paul seems to be giving the official version, that Jesus appeared to Cephas, then the twelve, then to over five hundred brothers and sisters. I can only think that the church had realised that telling the story as it actually happened was not always the best way to go about it. They wanted to make clear that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and perhaps felt that saying it was women who he first appeared to, was a bit of a stumbling block to many. This does not mean that if asked they would have denied the true order of events. Because the truth of the resurrection was so important to the church, their official version did not need to include those who Jesus first appeared to.

I have struggled for many years in the church over the role of women. I have felt criticized for being a strong woman, a person who likes to share what I have learned with others. Why would the Lord give me the gift of being a teacher if I were not supposed to use that gift in the church? So often I have felt that some church leaders have gotten it wrong, and the Holy Spirit was championing the role of women in his church whilst those leaders were resisting him. There are times, however, when I do not need to be right, I just need to be obedient. “God have your way” is the cry of my heart. The Lord wants to use both men and women, of all ages, to build his kingdom. Let’s work together, allowing God to have his way, whilst being sensitive to the needs of those around us.